


What We Are Inside

by flugantamuso



Category: New World Zorro
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:31:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flugantamuso/pseuds/flugantamuso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because what a person reads can sometimes tell you a thing or two about what they are</p>
            </blockquote>





	What We Are Inside

**Mendoza **wouldn’t read at all if he could help it, but the Alcalde has ordered him to read this Machiavelli, and he is a loyal soldier, so he reads. He doesn’t understand most of it, but what he does understand sounds an awful lot like the Alcalde himself, although the alcalde never seems to get it right, at least not the kind of right that this Machiavelli is talking about. Then again, Mendoza doesn’t like a lot of the things that Machiavelli describes, doesn’t really like Machiavelli, so maybe it’s a good thing that the Alcalde can’t seem to meet Machiavelli’s standards.

**Victoria **only reads occasionally. There’s so much work to be done in a tavern that she rarely has time to herself, and when she does have time she usually spends it with friends, sharing a meal and a good conversation filled with the latest gossip. But there are late nights when all the customers are abed and she’s too tightly wound to fall asleep, and those are the nights that she turns to her tiny library.

She’s only got a few books, and most of those are ones that travellers have accidentally left behind. She’s thought about offering them to Diego, who would undoubtedly appreciate them more, but they’re private somehow, hers in a way that few other things are. She also has a few books left from her mother, precious things, and it is these that she reads most often.

Tonight she picks out a very worn copy of Andersen’s Fairy Tales, so old that the pages are coming out by the handful. If she wanted to she could buy a new copy; the tavern has given her enough money to spend on such things, but this is the one that she loves.

Fairy tales are beautiful and tragic, and sometimes joyful, and Victoria thinks that she has had the tragedy, and the beauty, and she’s had moments of joy; she really shouldn’t wish for more, only she can’t help but wish that the joy be a bit longer lasting.

**Alcalde Ramon **reads what is useful, what he would like to emmulate, and though he has not set foot in a church in years, he very occasionally finds himself reading his Bible.

It isn’t that he wants to emmulate what he finds there, in fact he often sneers at the sheer simplicity of it, and sometimes he shakes in frustration, remembering his simple mother, reading while his brother surrepticiously took the jam tarts from the windowsill where they were cooling. Reading isn’t a way to connect to his mother, he gave that up a long time ago, and really, it isn’t about connection at all, it’s just a compulsion that he can’t seem to shake.

A month will go by, and he’ll walk into his office after a long, unsuccessful day chasing bandits and dealing with intractible peasants. He’ll pull the book off his shelf and spend hours lost in the familiarity of the language.

**Alejandro **is a well-read man; he knows his Shakespeare, and his Bible, and can spend hours arguing with his son about Pascal or Aristotle. His favorite book, his favorite since he was a boy, is Shakepeare’s Tempest.

When he was young he liked the magic of it, the pageantry and power. When he grew a bit older he began to appreciate the political machinations, the philosophy and craftsmanship. Now, with a son older than Fernando, he pays more attention to the end, to Prospero when his plots are ended, and his power gone.

Alejandro knows better than to try to manipulate Diego, knows that he could never be the Prospero of the story, and usually he’s glad of that, but there are times when he wishes for just a little bit of magic.

**Felipe **has grown up with books. Part of that is Diego’s fault, his absolute insistance that Felipe be as well-educated as any young caballero, even though Felipe is no caballero. But more of it comes from a young boy finding something that he can connect to absolutely, in a way that he cannot connect to anything or anyone else.

He was reading before he was signing, before Alejandro and Diego learned the complicated hand motions and drew him away from his books. He doesn’t remember who taught him to read; he supposes it was his mother, and that makes him happy, though it’s a bitterweet sort of happiness.

Today, years after he has become comfortable with communicating with others, with friends aplenty and a bright future and a true family, a family that has adopted him, he is reading The Cantebury Tales. He wasn’t allowed to read this as a child, and so naturally, it made him so curious that he read it anyway. He finished it then feeling a little puzzled, too young to understand the references. Now he _does _understand them, and he’s bright red, grateful for once that no one is able to hear his laughter.

If they did catch him at it, Alejandro would tease him, and Diego would begin a lengthly lecture about what Chaucer intended to express with his bawdy tales, and Felipe doesn’t want that.

Just because he _can _communicate with others doesn’t mean that there’s not just as much fun to be had in books, and Diego’s explanation would spoil the bawdiness of the tale.

It’s a given that **Diego **reads, reads anything and everything that he can get his hands on. When he was a child his well-educated parents happily supplied him with books, but even they were a bit taken aback at the sheer quantity that he devoured.

As an adult he’s done much the same thing, and his father has often remarked that perhaps Diego is better suited for the university life. In another time Diego might agree, but he knows that he’s needed here, not only by the people, as a protector, but by his father, who isn’t really serious about sending Diego back to University, and who couldn’t bear to lose his son for another six years. So Diego stays, and learns the business of the ranchero backwards and forwards, and plays the masked bandit for the people, and reads.

It would be appropriate for him to read Robin Hood, and he certainly did as a boy. He has no illusions that his decision to become Zorro wasn’t partly motivated by a boyish desire to become Robin Hood. Now, though, he reads Don Quixote more than anything else, wishing that he didn’t see himself reflected quite so well in that legend as well as in the other.


End file.
